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U.S.A.
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1999
Directed
by William Hellfire
Starring
Misty Mundae
William Hellfire
Lily
Tiger
Color
| 89 Minutes
| XXX
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC |
2-disc set)
After Hours/Factory 2000
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Misty's
blowjob movie.
That's
pretty much the be-all and end-all of this 'underground' film,
a shot-on-camcorder production made by a group of stoned college
kids possessing a great deal more enthusiasm than money or talent.
19-year old Misty Mundae
now known as Erin Brown (Masters Of Horror: Sick Girl,
The Rage)
was one of the members of
this group, called Factory 2000. It specialized in cheap fetish
videos focused on strangulation and sexual degradation, which
were sold to finance other interests in music and experimental
filmmaking. Vampire Strangler is
the most notorious of these fetish features, because in it the
future B-movie starlet and scream queen is shown performing
real heterosexual sex acts. No softcore simulation here, ladies
and germs... That's really Misty, with a real penis in her mouth.
Really.
The film is merely
a series of vignettes laced together by a nonsensical, practically
nonexistent plot. To wit:
A young woman (Misty) gets naked
and takes a bubble bath. A figure in a black cape appears in
the bathroom and proceeds to hypnotize, then strangle her. (She's
made to suck his fingers before being throttled.) The victim
writhes and thrashes in the tub, eventually seeming to expire.
The caped vampire-like figure disappears and Misty suddenly
wakes up. Was it all a dream? Can you believe this scene lasts
six minutes?
The same young
woman is sleeping in bed when a film projector magically appears
in the room, turning itself on and running about two minutes
of a grainy black & white porno loop. Awakened, our heroine
seems to imagine herself as a participant in the fuck footage.
The projector then shuts itself off and vanishes, so she tries
to go back to sleep. At this point the vampire-like figure enters
the room and starts strangling her. As she squirms and struggles
her nightie rides up and we see that she doesn't wear panties
to bed (or believe in excessive grooming of the bikini area).
She's strangled and flashes her muff for three solid minutes
it can seem like an eternity until, as she appears to gasp
her last and finally die, the vampire teleports out of the scene.
Misty wakes up, clutching her throat. Another dream?
In the film's
first dialog scene we see Misty making a phone call, revealing
in a silly fake accent that her character's name is Lydia
and she lives in Transylvania. She rings up her American cousin
Johnny (director William Hellfire), announcing that she'll soon
be arriving at the Newark airport for a visit. Johnny agrees
that this is wonderful news. Cut to Misty doing a bit of roller-skating
in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood, then on to Johnny's dingy
basement bedroom, where, after a tickling session, he manually
stimulates and performs oral sex on her. Misty returns the favor
by giving him head. (She's no pro but, for a 19-year old, obviously
already quite experienced.)
Back to the
bedroom after a quick fade to black. A guitar lesson turns into
something else entirely as cousins Lydia and Johnny continue
their incestuous fling.
While they get it on, another young woman (Lily Tiger) appears
in the doorway and voyeuristically watches them, getting all
hot and bothered. Misty mounts Hellfire and rides him to orgasm
on the squeaky bed; he rolls her over and humps her missionary
for awhile. Mystery voyeur woman disappears; her presence is
never explained.
More sex, pretty much a replay
of what we've seen before, albeit shot with an annoyingly wobbly
camera. While they're doing it Hellfire starts to strangle Misty.
Apparently an asphyxiophiliac, she doesn't offer resistance.
(He stops short of killing her.) Meanwhile, some kind of goofy
voodoo witchdoctor, in a papier-mβchι mask and waving a tiki
torch, dances outside the house.
Later the witchdoctor shows up
at the door, claiming to represent the Church of the Millennium
and asking for a donation. He slips Hellfire a drug which turns
him into a cape-wearing vampire in pancake makeup, boxer shorts
and tube socks. Misty wiggles around on the bed acting all horny
only to be bitten, traditional vampire style, by her transformed
cousin.
There's
a coda to this, a sort of twist ending, that's simply too stupid
to bother describing.
Vampire
Strangler really isn't
all that difficult to qualify
it's thoroughly awful, failing utterly as both horror and smut.
It doesn't have anything to offer, except to those who enjoys
interminable sequences of Misty Mundae writhing nude and moaning
softly while being strangled, and/or Misty Mundae having conventional
sex (minus any money shots) with a skinny, lank-haired hippie-looking
guy. Given that said guy was her boyfriend at the time as well
as the director, a mildly creepy air of "I can't believe
I'm hittin' this so I better record it for posterity" permeates
the proceedings, which is only enhanced by the fact that Misty,
while devilishly cute, looks disturbingly young. (A legal adult,
she could nonetheless easily pass for 15 or 16.)
Ms. Mundae
or rather, Ms. Brown
is reportedly not happy that this piece of junk has resurfaced
now that she's moved on with her career, leaving the world of
direct-to-video sexploitation behind. But she needn't be ashamed
about what at worst amounts to a youthful indiscretion. (God
forbid had any of the stupid things I did at that age been videotaped!)
Watching Vampire Strangler merely
demonstrates how far she's come in the decade since; with meaty
roles in films by Tony Marsiglia and Lucky McKee's Masters
of Horror episode she's proven herself to be a genuinely
talented actor, not just a cutie with a hot little bod.
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Vampire
Strangler
was previously released on VHS and on DVD in a limited pressing
(1,000 copies), although not in the form presented in this new
2-disc collector's edition. The folks at After Hours Cinema (a
sub-label of E.I./POP Cinema) have done what they could to make
it semi-watchable, not only reediting the pic but adding background
music and additional footage (chiefly the magic projector sequence
and some stock footage of eastern Europe). They've also cleaned
up the full-frame image to the best extent possible, which is
not to say that the movie still doesn't look anything other that
what it is a homemade shot-on-camcorder student project lensed
in a basement with bad lighting. Dialog doesn't sound good at
all; fortunately Misty is the one cast member who is generally
easy to understand. (There are only four speaking roles anyway,
with few lines.)
The 89-minute feature is found on Disc 1, along
with ten trailers for current and future After Hours releases.
These promos are divided into three sections: Previews Vault
(Misty vehicles The Erotic Diary Of Misty
Mundae, Flesh For Olivia,
and Chantal), New Features (Darian
Caine Exposed, Sexual Delirium,
the "Millennium Edition" DVD of Vampire
Strangler), and Coming Soon (Sexual
Freedom In Denmark, Sexual Liberty
Now, The Starlets, and The
Starlets 2: Chastity). The films in this last group are
'70s XXX pics; their trailers are chock-full of hardcore humping
and splooge-spurting money shots. The ones for Sexual
Freedom In Denmark and Sexual Liberty
Now both "mondo"-type pornos contain unintentionally
hilarious narration. (NOTE: The trio of Previews Vault
trailers play automatically whenever the disc loads.)
Disc 2 contains assorted deleted/isolated scenes
from the main feature, three short unrelated films and six Factory
2000 trailers. Among them is an alternate opening to Vampire
Strangler that includes additional hardcore footage (involving
an actress other than Misty Mundae) and characters not present
in the rest of the film. The three shorts My Property
(1998), Vibrating Maid (2001) and My Date With Misty
(2002) all showcase Misty getting naked and kinky, albeit in
the strictly softcore style her fans are accustomed to. (Parts
of My Date With Misty, a phone sex vignette, were incorporated
into the "European" cut of Vampire
Vixens available in the Misty
Mundae Euro-Vixen Collection.) The trailers are for the ultrasleazy,
no-budget Factory 2000 titles Nude Strangler,
Infamous Bondage Murders (and its
sequel), Shock 2000, Snuff
Perversions and Duck! The Colombine
High Massacre. 2/27/08 |
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